(disclaimer for internets: OF COURSE he is very well supervised around the pool. It’s more for peace of mind than anything else)

Isn’t that the cutest thing ever? He looks like an old man to me, which is fitting because lately, he has been exhibiting some really funny old man tastes. His favorite things to eat these days are salami and olives. He also likes figs. Crazy, right?

Clark is 18 months old. Way! It’s true.

I can’t quite believe how this parenting thing just keeps getting better and better. He is the light of my life and I crave time with him like I crave sunshine. When I get home from work and I squat down, spread my arms wide, and he comes running full force, hurling his little body at me, the joy I feel is something indescribable.

He does so many hilarious and adorable things lately. It seems like every few days he has a new trick or a new word. Last night I said, do you want to go look out the window for a bus? (He loves to do this. Bus! he announces, then Bye Bus!) “Yeah”, he said. “Are you saying yeah, now?” I asked. “Yeah!” he answered.

I hope I can always remember how utterly delightful he is at this moment. To facilitate my increasingly seive-like memory, I shall list some of his current features.

He really likes to accentuate certain consonants. We found a mint patch in our new yard, and we’ve been making lots of mojitos. He loves to go help his Daddy pick mint, as in the photo above. MmmmmminT, he says. Long M, stong T. This cuteness is also present when greeting our friend MmmmmmaTT, or when you’re at the store, walking past the butcher, MmmmmeaT.

He loves Freya. She tolerates him.

He wants to be outside all the time. When forced to be indoors, he’s constantly pulling on you going, “Outside? OK?” with his little eyebrows raised so hard, you think he might break his forehead.

For months now, thanks to his Grandfather, he has been obsessed with pretending to drive our cars. That’s pretty much all he wants to do. Sometimes the first words out of his mouth in the morning are, “Vroom Vroom?” At first he was happy just to stand on the seat and push buttons, but now he says, “Keys? Keys?” He wants things to light up and for the radio to be on.

For some reason he loves to throw things down the stairs. We call it experimenting with gravity.

I know that writing this down will make it change, but for the last month or so, he’s been sleeping through the night most nights. (I guess that virgin I sacrificed did the trick!) It took 17 months, but I think this is about average in the grand scheme of things. I know people whose alien pod children reportedly slept through the night at 3 months or whatever, but I also know folks whose 3 year olds still aren’t. He’s going to bed around 8pm every night, but he still wakes up at inconsistent times, anywhere from 5am-7:30am. I still marvel when I wake up in the morning and realize I got to sleep the whole night.

His number one best feature has got to be the unsolicited love. He will out of the blue plant a big kiss on your cheek, and you just want to fall over and die from the cuteness of it all. The best case of this is when we’re riding my bike together. He has a super cool seat that sits on the handlebars like this. Sometimes we’ll just be riding along, pointing out kitties and arf arfs and trucks, and he’ll reach up and grab the strap of my helmet under my chin, pull my face down and lay one on me. Bwah!

I could go on all day, but I’ll leave you with some super cute pictures of his first haircut. Prepare yourself.

Before:

During: (That’s his Auntie M!)

And After: (OMG! He’s suddenly a Little Boy!)

1. I was driving along and he started chirping, “Park! Park!” from the backseat. He recognized the park that we’ve only walked or ridden our bikes to, out the car window, driving by all fast.

2. Later, I was loading him into his car seat and a nearby car honked. “Beep!’, he announced.

3. I locked myself out of the house and huffed, “Aw, Jeez!” You know what he did, right? Ahhjeezz! Ahhjeezz! Ahhjeezz!

4. His grandmother drives a light blue Volkswagon Bug. On walks, he’s started to notice Bugs of many other colors, pointing and saying “Nanny!”

5. But a Bug is a very distinctive car, you say. Well, today on a walk, he pointed at a blue Prius (mine is black) and said, “Mama!” Get out of town, right? A Prius looks roughly like a million other hatchbacks. When does he have time to notice what my car looks like? How does he understand that the Prius is *my* car?

6. He picked a dandelion and brought it to me, unprompted.

Some of you may have seen these on the facebooks, but check out my boy, and how he grows:

He’s turning into such a pleasant little guy. He’s super affectionate these days and will sometimes just come up and surprise you with a hug! You can imagine how much instant joy this brings us. I caught this shot of SB, the lucky recipient of unsolicited Clark Love:

I don’t want to deprive you of a shot of his infectious grin, so here you go:

I am the luckiest woman in the world.

And speaking of douchey images of oneself, I have GOT to figure out a way to shut off my inner cynic. This class I’m taking is going to be pretty cool, I think, but it would be a lot better if I could shut off one of the voices in my head. It’s like I’ve got a middle-aged, midwestern republican living up there who always has to tell me what a hippie I am. As I sit in a circle, sharing thoughts, or worse, interpretive dancing, all I can hear is that guy making fun of me, telling me what a silly, liberal, priveleged fruit I am. This is super lame, because that negativity is so not me! I’m a joiner and an excellent sport. I’m perfectly happy to freestyle dance in a circle with other grownups on a Sunday afternoon.

Further evidence of this privelege, check this out:

I accidently paid $8 for some chocolate covered hazelnuts. I thought that sticker said 50% off. SB had to point it out to me. I’m sad to say this is not the first time I’ve been fooled by expensive nuts. One time at Metropolitan Market, home to many guffaw-worthy, yet tempting and delicious grocery items, I accidently bought a $22 nut sampler. I didn’t look at the price when I picked it up, but when I was checking out and my apple, sparkling water, and nuts came to $27, I did a poor job of hiding my surprise. I’m ashamed to admit, I was too embarrassed to put them back.

Thanks all for your advice with the sleeping. It’s pretty effing bleak around here right now, as far as that’s concerned. I feel as if he’s a newborn again. In response to several of you who suggested eliminating the second nap, I’d be happy with ANY nap at all during the day. I completely agree with Amy in the comments though, and this is what he needs from me right now,
and it won’t last forever. As it stands, there is no sleeping unless one of us is holding him, day or night. Which means I get nothing done while he’s napping, and I don’t sleep at all after his first waking, so I’m up from 2am-7am. He better rethink some of this if he doesn’t want to be an only child. Wait…

Lastly, I’ve hopped on the Words With Friends bandwagon, so if you want to play, I’m ZestyJenny.

Ooh! Here’s some cuteness for you. Clearly, I found myself far too amusing:

* title: There’s a funny little moment at the end of recess across the street, when I hear the bell, the kids all run in, and if you look out the window right then, the playground is deserted but all the swings are still moving. I love it when I catch it.

Speaking of souls and tears, however, YOU MUST HELP ME. We are in all out sleep refusal around here. I’m desperate and I’ll take any advice. Maybe a combination of ideas will work, so let me have them. Here are the stats. I await your diagnosis. Before he got sick a couple weeks ago, he always went down easy. He had two long naps per day, and went to bed at 7 every night. (He still woke up 3 times per night, but now I realize how good I had it. Depressing.) Now, we fight and fight and fight for all sleep. This whole day has been an unsuccessful nap attemp. He just cries and cries! Or, falls dead asleep repeatedly, only to spring up and start crying the second you lay him down, like some sort of weird reflex. We’ve tried everything, including letting him cry for up to 5 minutes, but you guys. You guys. He gets so upset that he barfs. BARFS. Which is of course, the most soul crushing scenario. (Am terrible parent! Also, Barf to clean up. A baby to change, etc.) Anyway. Please help me.

So, this YOG thing. A friend of mine logged into her google account from my iPhone and didn’t log out. When I next went into my Reader, I was of course actually in hers. There, in her feeds, was Zesty Enterprise with like, 15 unread posts, all YOGS. It looked really boring to me, and not like something I’d be super motivated to read. Not only that, I don’t like feeling like I HAVE to do something because I SAID I would, you know? Instead, I think I’ll just stop making dumb rules for myself and just make an effort to post about good things, under the YOG category.

In other navel gazing news, today I’m starting a six week yoga class called Resolve to Evolve. I’m supposed to bring a journal. I hope to report that it helps me to stay on my health and exercise wagon, all while calming and centering me and whatnot. I’ll let you know.

If there’s poopy in your diaper clap your hands!
If there’s poopy in your diaper clap your hands!
If there’s poopy in your diaper and you really need a wiper,
if there’s poopy in your diaper clap your hands!

(OMG. I apologize to the childless among you. Did I just lose you for good?)

Another one I sing all the time goes like this:

You can’t have my coffee.
It’s not for you.
I’m so very sorry.
Does it make you feel blue?
You can’t have my coffee.
You have to wait til high school.

(sometimes I substitute coffee for beer and have a good snicker.)

At my Grandma’s house I still get to take a bath in the sink. It’s pretty tight, but usually all the adults stand in the kitchen and entertain me, so I don’t need room for toys.

It’s so annoying to have the paparazzi around while I bathe.

Don’t you put this on the internet, Mom!

I honestly thought before I had a baby, that parenting was going to be drudgery. You know, like even when you have a job you love, it’s still hard to get up in the morning and do the same thing every day. I still wanted to do it, but I thought it was going to feel like that. Was I ever wrong. I am so absolutely in love with this boy. I could watch him do stuff all day long, which I guess, I do. Even when he wakes me up at the asscrack, and I haul myself out of bed and schlep down the hallway, as soon as I open his door and see him standing there in his jammies, I break out in the biggest smile. Scooping him up and hugging him close, feeling his little arms around my neck… ohmygod it’s the best thing in the world. I think back to when I was working, getting up early, I bet the first time I cracked a smile was the fake one I would flash to a coworker in the elevator, three hours after I got up. But now? I’m beaming before sunrise.

When he goes to bed, I savor the free time, but more often than not I find myself watching videos I’ve made of him on my phone, or editing photos I’ve taken of him. Right now he’s napping and I really want to finish this, but when I hear him start to fuss, I’ll be so happy to run upstairs, scoop him up again, and get my post-nap snuggles. Those are the best.

Let me be clear that all of this loveliness was not automatic, for the pregnant among you. I don’t think everyone necessarily gets rocked as hard as I did, but I can honestly say that I was CRAZY for the first 4 months or so. I didn’t feel like I was, I think I held it together externally for the most part, but in retrospect, I was totally nutso. I was not at all in touch with the universe. Everything seemed SO DRAMATIC! WERE WE GOING TO MAKE IT?!? WILL THE BABY SURVIVE?!?

A status update for posterity’s sake: Clark is not walking by himself yet, but he cruises along holding on to furniture very skillfully. He can say hi, Daddy, and yeah. He waves. The waving is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. He doesn’t just wave his arm about like most babies, he tilts his wrist back and forth like a little float princess. Throw in a ‘hi-eeeee.,” and the cuteness is deadly. He’s pretty much eating everything we eat now, with his favorites being scrambled eggs, toast, bananas, yogurt, graham crackers, cheerios, meatballs, corn, peas, and carrots. We have his 1 year checkup later this week. We’re hoping he finally weighs enough to switch to the forward facing carseat. He’s so skinny!

Anyway, I’ll stop blathering and show you the slideshow. Thank you all so much for coming along for the ride! Clark and I truly appreciate it.

edited to add: Perhaps you’d like to hum along “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon whilst you watch this clip. It’s supposed to be there. Somehow, the youtubes knew I was using it and busted me. Lame! I’m sure John would appove of this usage.

This is really long, and probably not of interest to all but a few of you. If you’re one of my 2 or 3 male readers, you may want to skip this. There is talk of fluids and cervical lips.

All day today I’ve been thinking about what I was doing at this exact time. It’s 9:49 pm and I was probably doing laps in the business-y hallways outside the birth center. Looking back, at this point in my labor I felt like I was watching myself in a movie. I couldn’t believe it was really happening.

The next post will be about my Clarkie, but this one’s about me. Happy Birth Day to me!

Clark Herbert Jacobs
Born
Sunday, December 14, 2008
6:13 am
7lbs 15oz
19.5” long

At 4:40 in the morning on Saturday the 13th, I woke up to pee. When I hoisted myself out of the guest bed I felt a warm gush. I was only 39 weeks and 1 day, so I thought there was NO WAY that could be what it seemed to be. My due date was the 19th, and all along we assumed that the baby would come late, probably on Christmas. So, I wiped up the trail of fluid I had made to the bathroom and went back to bed. I didn’t even tell Aaron. Over the next hour, I had 4 very mild, totally ignorable contractions that I was still totally in denial about. Water usually doesn’t break first, except for in the movies, and besides, this was totally not happening today. At 5:30am, Aaron’s alarm went off because he was taking the Lees to the airport that morning. I called to him to come to the guestroom and fussed over him driving carefully because it was snowy and icy out. He asked me if I was ok and that’s when I told him about the gush. He promised to be careful and left.

I woke up again at 8 and when I got up there was another warm gush. That’s when I knew I better call the midwife. I could tell Susan was just as skeptical as I was, and we agreed to meet at The Birthing Inn at 11:00. I took my time showering and getting dressed and put on one of the adult diapers they’d told me to get, that I was SURE I wouldn’t need. I was super glad to have them though, when I was putting on my shoes to leave and had two more gushes.

When we got there, I told Susan that I was now sure this was actually it. She did a test and confirmed that indeed, that was amniotic fluid and no, I was not just wetting myself. Now of course I was on a ticking clock. When your water breaks first, you have 24 hours to be in active labor or you have to go to the hospital and be induced, no intervention-free, birth center birth like we planned. Susan checked my cervix and it was posterior and not at all effaced, perhaps dilated to 1 cm. She sent us home with a homeopathic cervix softener that I was to take once an hour, and to keep her posted.

On the way home, we planned to go out for breakfast because at this point I was still not contracting at all. Aaron had to mail something so we stopped at the UPS store first. While he was in there, I had 4 contractions exactly 3 minutes apart and then some serious gushing, more than the Depends could handle. When he got back I told him we had to go home.

At home we busied ourselves scurrying about trying to finish the last things on our list that we thought we had another week to do. Aaron installed the car seat, and I packed a bag for me and for the baby, and we cleaned and prepped for the guests who would soon arrive. Tiana came over for a little while and hung out with me while Aaron had to go run errands. Lael arrived in the afternoon and started totally being a rockstar. She would do so much for us over the next 2 days. My mom got there soon after and then the two of them did the last thing on the list, which was to make a belly cast. It turned out really beautifully and I’m so glad it got done.

Afterwards, I sat on the ball and we all hung out for about 2 hours, and my contractions got to be regular and a little more difficult. When we confirmed that they had been consistently 4 minutes apart and a minute long for an hour, we decided to call Susan back and tell her we were coming in. The weather was snowy and we wanted to get to the birth center before it got too treacherous outside. I think it was around 6pm.

We got there and settled in. There was an hour or so of organizing our stuff and eating sandwiches and me thinking things were further along than they were. When Susan checked me I had made progress but not a ton. My cervix was now anterior, 75% effaced, but still only about 1-2cm dilated.

Aaron and I got busy walking the halls and doing squats on the stairs. Things got increasingly more difficult from then until about midnight. I took a shower, tried a few lying down, and was starting to get a little scared. Somewhere in there I asked to be checked again and I was 100% effaced and dilated to 4-5cm. I was starting to get worried I wouldn’t be able to handle birth because there was so much further to go and I was already having a hard time.

Between Midnight and 6am was when things got really scary. I was not handling my contractions well. I would appreciate the time between them and rest and relax, but as soon as one would start I would immediately tense up. I started making increasingly more distressed sounds, not calm ones like I had intended. I would try to switch to calmer noises and horse lips at the height of my contractions, saying over and over again, “Calm down, calm down, calm down”. (also, Mother Fucker, Jesus Christ, Oh God, Oh Dear, and Aaron’s favorite, Shit Balls)

This scary time is very fuzzy for me. There was some time spent on the toilet, squatting near the toilet, then finally in the tub. Sometime while I was in the tub, Susan called Amy, her partner, to come in. I had been waiting for that because I knew that we weren’t even close until Susan made that call. Being in the tub was not the relief I had hoped it would be. I couldn’t get comfortable. I couldn’t find any kind of escape from the contractions. I knew in my head that I needed to relax, to surrender to them, to go THROUGH them, but I just couldn’t. Finally someone bossed me into getting out of the tub, and I’m so glad. I thought that seemed impossible, to move from where I was, I was so crazy from the pain.

There was a lot of screaming. I just could. Not. Help it.

When I got on the bed, Susan was able to check me and see that I had a bit of cervical lip that was stuck between the baby’s head and my pubic bone and was getting pinched with each contraction. It was apparently swollen to the size of a golf ball. Once she moved it, which was incredibly painful, I was complete and could start pushing. It was 5:32am. Pushing contractions were also painful, but NOTHING like I had been feeling with that pinched lip.

All in all, I only pushed for 45 minutes but it seems like a lot happened. At first I was on my side. It was just so scary. Pushing requires such a crazy mix of surrender and control. You have to keep your mind from holding back and just push with abandon, even though it feels like you are going to explode. I was so afraid of tearing, though by this point, I just wanted it to be over. They eventually told me to lay flat on my back and gave me one end of a ski rope thing to hold, my mom had the other. Then I would pull towards me, curling up, while pushing. It was so freaking intense!

Each contraction, they would tell me I was making so much progress. I could feel the baby moving down. It felt like it was close, but still so far away. Eventually Susan told me she was going to have to do an internal episiotomy. Apparently, my hymeneal ring was so tight that the baby was just not going to get past it. I told her to do what she needed to do. That was when she told Aaron that he couldn’t watch anymore. I swear I didn’t even feel it.

After she did that, he was out in the next contraction. He came out in one push. There was no crowning, no ring of fire like I was expecting, no calm birth of the head and then waiting for the next contraction for the body, just one big push. One big push and his whole body was out and warm and on my chest. He cried IMMEDIATELY. Loudly and lustily. I worried he was getting traumatized he was crying so hard, in that grunty, newborn, pterodactyl sounding way. We waited for a minute or so before looking to see that he was a he.

I didn’t get to hold him for very long before he was wrapped up, and Aaron took him over to the rocking chair, because I had to deal with the placenta and the stitches. The placenta came out just fine, which was a relief since I’ve had so many friends have issues with theirs. Then I got three shots of a local and a bunch of stitches for the episiotomy and a 1st degree tear. It really wasn’t that bad. Even shots and stitches don’t hurt after labor.

Clark is the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen. Since he came out so fast he’s not abused looking at all. He doesn’t have that alien lizard look that most babies have.

Birth was much scarier than I thought it was going to be. In retrospect, I don’t know if it was a good thing that I’ve been to so many births. I had a lot of expectations of how it was going to be and how I was going to handle it.

I’m trying, with a bit of distance, to feel more proud of myself. I know that I should perhaps be even MORE proud because I was able to do it, even with that horrible cervical lip situation, but I’m actually kind of ashamed of all the screaming and freaking out I did. Writing that, I can see how dumb that sounds, but really, I know that I made it more traumatic for myself and everyone else with all that screaming. I can say that I was never mean to anyone, though, and I’m definitely proud of that. I know how hard it is to be an attendant wishing you could do more to help, and then have the poor mom bite your head off. Even though you know it’s not personal, it still hurts your feelings. I’m happy to have not done that to anyone.

I’m glad to know about the lip. It makes sense to me, with how it felt. For the majority of the labor, the contractions started, built, peaked, and went back down, as they should. Even the worst of those, I was able to handle, by breathing. The peak would last about 3 or 4 pain-full breaths, then it would start to recede, and it would be such a relief. I would be proud to have made it through another one and I would revel in the break before the next one. But when he moved down far enough to start pinching that lip between his head and my pubic bone, the contractions no longer built, they would just immediately pulse with the most insane, inescapable pain I could imagine. I’m glad to understand what was going on, though. If I ever do this again, I will know that that kind of pain is not what I should be feeling.

It is very unusual to have any kind of episiotomy at the Birth Center. Susan told me the next day that she had discussed it with some of the other midwives and they all agreed that if she hadn’t done that, because of the way she could even see my urethra stretching, I would have ended up with a 4th degree tear. I can’t even imagine having to deal with that recovery. I found my stitches difficult enough, and they only hurt for about 5 days.

When I started writing this, Clark was only a few days old, now two weeks have passed. I can’t believe how much I love him already. I miss his little face when someone else holds him, I want him touching me all the time. I’m so glad that I’m feeling so attached to him, because I really didn’t when he was inside me. Some mothers describe how connected they feel to their babies when they’re pregnant, but for me, the baby was always too abstract of a concept.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I still have not made it through a day without crying. But just like people say, it’s totally worth it. Just the smell of his head, his fuzzy duck hair, his cheeks, his nose… I could go on and on.

***
edited to add:

I hadn’t read this since I wrote it, and now I just read through it again after posting it and I’m surprised at how negative it sounds. I didn’t mean it to be, and that’s not the impression I have of it now. There are so many more scary things that can happen at a birth, and all in all, I’m so lucky to have had a pretty smooth time. Maybe what they say about those forgetting hormones women have is true, because now, I feel like it was a GREAT birth and I’m proud of myself for making it through the biggest, scariest, most personally challenging thing you ever do. For the record.